September 11, 2014, BY Matt Hughes

It was Aug. 21, the day before first-year students moved in, and the Bucknell University campus was enjoying a final peaceful summer day before the bustle of another academic year returned — save for a tiny corner across Route 15.

Inside the Bucknell Art Barn, 17 engineering students filled the air with a haze of sawdust and the screech of electric saws, drills and power sanders. They moved with purpose from station to station, concentrating in order to make each cut according to plans they devised that morning, and fashioned it all together to make a wooden toolbox — their first project in a week dedicated exclusively to building.

Held on campus Aug. 20–26, the first-ever Bucknell Fabrication Workshop (B-Fab) was a crash course in fabrication and prototyping aimed at making College of Engineering students better engineers and entrepreneurs. Professors Eric Kennedy, biomedical engineering; David Cipoletti, mechanical engineering; and Nate Siegel, mechanical engineering; challenged students to build a series of devices — from an Altoids-can flashlight to a miniature drag racer — while introducing a series of basic fabrication techniques such as woodworking, soldering, laser engraving, 3-D printing, composite molding and computer-aided design.

"These are pretty simple projects, but ultimately they're going to have to design things that are more complicated," Siegel said. "They're going to make drawings and send those to somebody else to build. The more they understand how things can be built using standard processes, the better off they're going to be later on."

Students building their practical design knowledge agreed that the process was empowering. "People assume engineers are doing this all of the time, but we're not," said B-Fab participant Delaney Charney '16. "We spend a lot more time writing plans and giving drafts to the people who do this, and this gives me a lot more confidence in designing for those people."

"I'm only a sophomore, and before this I felt I didn't have the necessary skill to make the things in my head possible," added Nikki Lazarus '17. "This gave me confidence to make something that I imagined into something that works."

Engineering students at Bucknell have access to advanced fabrication in the College of Engineering's Product Design Laboratory, but B-FAB intentionally focused on simpler tools students can access more easily and, in many cases, relatively cheaply. The organizers hoped those skills would enable students to be entrepreneurs, as well as engineers.

"When they have an idea, we want them to think of the simple things they can use to build a prototype, rather than feel they have to hand it off to a technician with years of experience and rely on that person," Kennedy said.

"We want students to feel confident that they can build something, convince somebody else that they have a worthy idea, and take it forward," Kennedy said. "If they feel like they haven't established hands-on skills it holds them back in the design process, and they never act on their ideas."

B-Fab included lessons about judging the market for a new product, thinking about how users will interact with it, and developing a rudimentary business plan. At the end of the week, students were asked to design and build a prototype for a consumer product of their choosing on a $50 budget. Sophomore Nikki Lazarus and junior Sydney Isaacs designed a piece of luggage with an enclosed garment steamer.

"You needed to throw out whatever you might have been thinking, because any idea was on the table," Isaacs said.

Working in pairs, the students raced through the design and prototyping phases in a mere two days. Other prototypes ranged from a brush with storage for hair accessories and a detachable mirror to a storage bin that folds into a chair — a dorm room storage solution — to a pedal accessory that makes any toilet seat self-lowering.

"Once we decided something, there was no second guessing," Lazarus said. "We just needed to go for it — try it out."

"We want them to keep making stuff, for extracurricular projects or even curricular projects," Cipoletti said. "Maybe they'll get a little more excited about their coursework, because it doesn't just have to be about designing something — they can make a prototype of their design and turn it into something real. It is empowering to be able to make something."

MakerSpaces

The MakerSpaces at Bucknell are open to all faculty, staff, and students.

The 7th Street Studio is a creative workspace open to students, faculty and staff throughout the academic year. It consists of a studio as well as a MakerSpace annex. Together, these two areas are equipped with a wide range of traditional and modern tools.

The Maker-E is a creative space for learning about and working on electronics, programming, and similar projects. Located in room 111 of Dana Engineering, this MakerSpace is open to all students, faculty and staff throughout the academic year.

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